Fireworks are "cultural" in Hawaii with our large Asian (and part-Asian) population.

Professionals will "pop" fireworks too, but most locals will be at home making their neighborhoods a smokey fairyland.

Red "Ahi" tuna is lucky food!

Some local families are pounding mochi rice in Usu with mallets; "THWACK!" Don't hit uncle's hand!!

"Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us." - Hal Borland

"For last year's words belong to last year's language; And next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning."

- T.S. Eliot

"And ye, who have met with Adversity's blast, And been bow'd to the earth by its fury; To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass'd Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury -Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime,T he regrets of remembrance to cozen, And having obtained a New Trial of Time, Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen." - Thomas Hood

"Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account." - Oscar Wilde

"But can one still make resolutions when one is over forty? I live according to twenty-year-old habits." - Andre Gide

"A happy New Year! Grant that I May bring no tear to any eye When this New Year in time shall end Let it be said I've played the friend, Have lived and loved and labored here, And made of it a happy year." - Edgar Guest

"Of all sound of all bells... most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year." - Charles Lamb

"Every man regards his own life as the New Year's Eve of time."

- Jean Paul Richter

"Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man." - Benjamin Franklin